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If you read my last blog post, in the middle of all the mumble jumble and contest talks, I mentioned that on my way to Bali, I ended up on the wrong island… Well, now you get to know about that, and the day leading up to it as well.

How did I end up booking the wrong tickets? Well, basically, while planning my trip, I started typing in Bali into the flight search engine, and Balikpapan came up as the suggestion. Since it was also in Jakarta, I just assumed that it was the same place, and booked my tickets. Boy, could I have been more wrong?

I fell sick on Tuesday, and had a pretty bad cough and cold by Wednesday morning. And this was only the start of the day. I got to work around 9:15am, which is a normal time for me. I then proceeded working like a good little worker (with the occasional breaks on Facebook/Twitter/IceCaves), until around 10:45am. At that point, the internet just stopped working. I don’t mean it slowed down, I mean it just stopped. Not even Google would load… The phone lines were down too, and to top it off, it was just me and one other guy in the office – everyone else (including my boss) had eerily disappeared.

What to do when you have no internet and nothing else to do? You play old school games like Minesweeper and Solitaire. But seriously, how many hours can one person spend playing those games? Naturally, I was bored as hell after two hours. It was lunch time at this point, but I’d only had time to grab an apple – I was leaving for the weekend and hadn’t had time to do any actual groceries or anything like that. So that meant I didn’t really have anything to eat for lunch, except my handy dandy apple.

My flight was at 7:45pm, and I needed to be at the airport around 6:00pm latest to check in. The traffic in Jakarta is really bad, so I was going to leave the office at around 5:00pm since the traffic is really bad, and head straight to the airport. At 3:00pm, I was so overcome by sleepiness (due to my cold) and boredom, that I gave up trying to wait, and left the office. The other guy working in the office with me recommended a mall on the way to the airport, so I decided to stop there and grab some food to eat. At least it would shut my stomach up!

I finally got to the airport, checked into my flight for Balikpapan at 7:45pm, and had to wait there for about 4 hours for the flight to take off. Luckily, I had my laptop and managed to watch three episodes of Chuck. It’s the last season, and I was finally catching up with it. Around the time my battery started dying, they announced that we needed to board the flight. Finally, things were looking up. I got onto the flight, stowed my bags away in the appropriate places, and settled in for the short 1.5 hour flight. I managed to get an aisle seat, which I prefer, and didn’t have any crying children next to me. As far as I was concerned, #win flight moments.

Things were really looking up at the airport – I managed to get off the plane pretty quickly, and my bag was one of the first on the conveyor belt. I got out, and got a cab. Pretty good, since it was nearly midnight at this point. And then I realized that things always seem to be going great, right before that moment when something awful is about to happen. And something awful happened. The cab driver, in an extremely terrible accent and incomprehensible english, told me he couldn’t take me to my hotel, because my hotel was on a different island. Ummm, what?

How could I be on the wrong island?

The wonderful skeezeball of a cab driver (and no, this isn’t anger towards him because I was on the wrong island, rather that he had the balls to laugh at me for it) started laughing and called over his friends to tell them how stupid I was for ending up on the wrong island. I got seriously irritated and even more confused. I went to talk to the flight airline desk, and finally understood what had happened. Bali was on a different island, and the airport I was meant to go to was Denpasar, not Balikpapan. Note to self: Don’t book flights in the middle of exam season, ever again. D’oh! The only way to get to Denpasar was to fly back to Jakarta the next day since there were no more flights that night, and then take another flight from Jakarta to Bali the day after that.

So poor ol’ me had to find a hotel at midnight, while sick, confused and annoyed out of my mind, that wouldn’t be too insanely expensive and was close to the airport. I managed to find a nice one next to the airport – seriously, it was actually partially ontop of the airport – the airport hotel 🙂 I checked in, and the guy felt bad for me, so he gave me a huge discount 🙂

I got into the room, then had to start checking online for flight information and how to get back to Jakarta and onwards to Bali. After midnight. While I was sick, and hadn’t eaten anything since about 3:30pm. I ordered some room service after a bit, and around 3am I finally went to sleep (after drinking half a bottle of cough syrup.. ok, I didn’t drink half :P). I was in a completely comatose state until 11:30pm the next day, when I realized I had to wake up and get all my stuff together, since hotel checkout was at 12, and I sure as hell wasn’t paying for another night!

I left the hotel, went back to the airport, and sorted out my tickets. Fortunately there was no fee cancellation for my return ticket to Jakarta – they just changed the dates for me 🙂 I then had to get tickets from Jakarta to Bali, which I could only get for the following day. Frustrating.

I did, however, finally manage to get to Bali. And Boy, was that an amazing trip! The beach, a tour, lunch by an active volcano, white water rafting, elephant feeding and riding… Eesh!

Some other interesting news:

These are contests I’m currently involved in – you should seriously consider entering all of them! The prizes are amazing, and the contests are pretty fun! Also, don’t forget about the upcoming contest that I’m having in conjunction with Just Smile, my other site, as well as two other friends.. But more about that later 🙂

There are 16 responses on “Of Lost Islands And Fail Days”

I’m glad after all of that you had a good trip anyway! 🙂
Hi! I just found your blog while I was looking around on the internet and I think you have a really cool website! You are very talented, too!
-Allie

Oh… so it was YOU who broke the Internet that one day. Damn you!!!! lol jk

Note to you: make you shouldn’t book a flight EVER… I’m an idiot, and even I couldn’t have screwed that up. *sorry for giving you a hard time like the taxi driver* (who was very rude by the way)… I do have to ask though… did you not double check the flight reservation? Whenever I plan something big like that, I always double check EVERYTHING.

Thank you! I really love the layout too. Mayra makes amazing layouts, lol. I also do have wordpress. She didn’t make the layout for wordpress, so I just converted it into a wordpress theme but I didn’t do the comments or anything. I’m going to do my blog on a subdomain so that way it doesn’t clutter up my domain. It’ll be a little different. I was just going to buy a new domain, but I want to make sure that I am going to keep up with it. Haha (:

Your trip/vacation sounds pretty lovely! I wouldn’t take an airplane though, that is crazy. I’m terrified of heights and airplanes, lol. So that wouldn’t happen c:

I would have been pretty miffed at that guy though, for having the nerve to laugh at you. 🙁 I’m not laughing at you, but I would not ever be in your situation because being from Indonesia and having been there a couple of times, I know my way around. I don’t blame you though, Indonesia is the biggest archipelago in the world and I’m sure you’re not the only one who’s landed on the wrong island.

Glad you finally got there in the end. And I hope you feel better now! I’m sure you totally know your way around Bali now. 😀

Awe! My brother once told me about this friend of his who tweeted something like, “Going to Bali! So excited!” one day, and the next day, she tweeted, “Going to Bandung instead – booked wrong flight.” It seems strangely similar to your case, except the locations.

I’m glad you enjoyed your trip, though! I’d love to go to Bali one day for a break from busy school life. 🙂

That sounds like quite an ordeal! To give yourself credit though, you seem to have handled it really well! I’ve have just sat down and cried for a week. It seems an easy enough mistake too to be honest, especially if you were stressed with exams and sick! That taxi drive sounds like a nasty piece of work though, he didn’t have to laugh at you.
I’m glad you got it all sorted though and enjoyed your trip!

It’s really lucky you had the money to be able to book another flight to Bali from Jakarta after returning from Balikpapan, and I’m glad you were still able to have such a lovely trip. I would love to have lunch by an active volcano! Maybe I’ll get to go to Hawaii someday…

You really have to make sure, especially when traveling, that you are going to the right place. I’ve gotten lost on just city buses alone because I didn’t read the bus details correctly and got on the wrong bus. I ended up on the whole other side of the city xD It was horrible but luckily I had the money to actually get back to the station and take the right bus.

I’m glad you enjoyed your trip! After all of that trouble, it’s nice to be rewarded =)

If you mean the Queer Quirks tumblr, then I made all the graphics for the layout, and the graphics on the blog that I did create you can find here: http://elfabella.deviantart.com/gallery/37472608. It was a lot of fun creating the graphics for this project! I probably went a little overkill, but hey, I got a good grade. 🙂

Well, your mislead adventure at the very least makes a good story. But really, that sucks.

OMG you got lost in INDONESIA!! but i’m sure it’s worth it eh to experience a new place even though you don’t know where you are right then XD bali and balik papan! totally two different places XD but i’m sure you enjoyed Indonesia because it’s fun there ^^ Malaysia is almost similar to Indonesia, but smaller XD I miss shopping in Jakarta and Bali is so beautiful! did you take any pictures? i’d love to see it ^^

p/s: sorry that you have to post so many times when commenting on my blog XD

Ah! You know… I seriously would have thought/assumed Bali was/is an abbreviation of Balikpapen, and therefore mostly made the same error as you did! …What an adventure-ish trip that must have been for you — something like that. Haha.

I don’t mean to laugh at your troubles, but they really are super hilarious…

Oh my goodness. That sounds like SUCH a hassle but at least it made for a good story right? LOL. It’s totally understandable that the driver would laugh at such a huge mistake, but calling over his friend to laugh about it is a bit rude! At least you survived and made it haha 🙂